The New York chapter of the Boy Scouts has flouted the organization’s national ban on gay adults — in a move celebrated by socially progressive members.
Zach Wahls, a straight Eagle Scout who is dedicated to fighting for gay rights, was thrilled about the hiring of 18-year-old Pascal Tessier, of Kensington, Md., as the first openly gay Eagle Scout summer camp leader.
Now the ball is squarely in the court of the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) National Council, he said.
“If the Boy Scouts stand down at a national level, they will have more or less admitted that they can’t enforce the ban against gay adults,” Wahls said Friday in an interview with Yahoo News.
“If the Boy Scouts intervene and pull Pascal’s membership, which would disqualify him from eligibility for the summer job, they will have just engaged in employment discrimination that is illegal in New York state.”
Deron Smith, the BSA’s director of communications, provided the following statement when contacted by Yahoo News for comment:
“The Boy Scouts policies for adult leaders and employees have not changed. While we were only recently made aware of this issue, we are looking into the matter.”
A BSA spokesperson declined to comment further when asked whether the national organization will take legal action against the New York chapter.
Gay rights advocates celebrate the move as the latest sign of the nation’s growing acceptance of LGBT people and waning tolerance for discrimination.
“I think it’s another significant step forward for full equality in the Boy Scouts of America. It’s one of the last cultural institutions that continues to discriminate against gay and lesbian people in this country,” Seth Adam, director of communications at GLAAD, told Yahoo News.
Adam sees a connection between the hiring of Tessier and the unprecedented national backlash to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana.
“Discrimination will not be tolerated in any institution any longer, and the Boy Scouts need to catch up,” he said.
BSA leadership voted in 2013 to allow openly gay members, but homosexual adults are still not permitted to be leaders.
In August 2014, Tessier wrote an opinion piece in Time magazine lamenting that on his 18th birthday he would be forced to leave an organization that fundamentally shaped his childhood.
“Despite the Boy Scouts’ historic decision last year to open its ranks to gay youth, the Scouts still ban gay adults. And as of today, that means me,” he wrote.
San Diego Judge Julia Kelety, who is the chairwoman for her two sons’ Boy Scout troop in San Diego, supports ending the ban on LGBT adult members but fears that acting precipitously could endanger its staying power.
“The policy should be changed,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “I guess the difficulty is that it’s a large organization, and it receives substantial support from religious organizations. Any organization simply cannot ignore its major supporters and donors.”
Kelety uses her expertise in law to teach the children about the U.S. Constitution and what it means to be a citizen of this nation — to prepare them for an Eagle rank-required merit badge.
She continues to support BSA despite her disagreement with its ban on LGBT adults, she says, because of its other extraordinary qualities.
“There is no organization like Boy Scouts, that provides outdoor skills, leadership skills, citizenship, community service and collegiality in one place in such an outstanding way as Boy Scouts does,” Kelety said.
As a judge in California, Kelety will need to withdraw her adult membership by Jan. 21, 2016. Earlier this year, the state’s Supreme Court voted that judges cannot be a part of the organization due to its policy toward homosexuals.
Wahls, who has lesbian parents, is also executive director of Scouts for Equality, a group, largely comprised of BSA alumni, committed to ending the ban on LGBT members.
Many of BSA’s leaders are older men with a wealth of life experience and wisdom that they can share with the children, Wahls says. Unfortunately, he continued, this sometimes comes with outmoded views of the gay and lesbian community.
“The challenge for the Scouts is that their leadership is dominated by older men of a past generation, and they’re trying to train the next generation of American leaders,” he said.
Tessier’s attorney, David Boies, agrees with Wahls that the Greater New York Councils’ disobedience could result in a court case — but hopes it can be settled before it comes to that.
“We all started this with the idea that the best resolution of this was a resolution based on conciliation and agreement,” Boies told The Associated Press.
